Our team the primary consultant or a members of a consulting team on hundreds of consulting projects. Our key areas of consulting are:
- Strategic planning for public libraries and multi-type cooperative systems
- Organizational effectives
- Project management
- Project evaluation
- Community Information Centers
- Advocacy and effective lobbying
- Final recommendations and plans are more valid and relevant when built on substantive discussion of different viewpoints, both the consultants and the client. Our teams bring together subject experts, strong group facilitation skills including focus groups and interviews, and nationally recognized library research. Each team is built to meet the needs of the individual client.
- Facilitation of group discussion, consensus building, and group decision making are done through a process of agenda and goal setting, objectively managed and facilitated group discussion; encouragement of group member participation in a protected discussion environment; and an emphasis on decision-making through consensus building and a goal of win-win solutions.
- NB&A would apply the following principles in planning:
- teamwork – within the NB&A team and with the client
- customer focus – what does the client want and how can that client be best served
- efficient work systems – how can limited resources best be used to deliver what the client wants and needs
- data-based decision making – what data exists and needs to be gathered and how can it be used to evaluate current services and determine the best strategies to meet client needs.
- NB&A uses all the information gathered and the expertise of the team to accomplish project goals. The NB&A team takes full responsibility for the success of the process facilitation and is not reluctant to raise difficult issues suggested by the information gathered.
- The final project of planning will be outcome based and include methods of evaluating both the process and the product of the planning effort.